


Hit The Fight Out of My Lungs

by HogwartsToAlexandria



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Aftercare, Aromantic, BDSM, BDSM Scene, Bathing/Washing, Blankets, Breathplay, Carrying, Comfort Rituals and Routines, Complicated Power Dynamics, Dom/sub, F/M, Flogging, Found Family, Impact Play, Light Bondage, Masochism, Non-Sexual Kink, Painplay, Platonic Relationships, Power Dynamics, Power Play, Service Dom Booker, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:27:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25526674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HogwartsToAlexandria/pseuds/HogwartsToAlexandria
Summary: Andy needs out of her head sometimes, and this is how they do it, more or less a few changes in implement and setting. Booker's happy to oblige, and Joe and Nicky are used to finding them after the fact, it's just a thing they do at this point.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Booker | Sebastien le Livre
Comments: 1
Kudos: 31
Collections: Battleship 2020, Battleship 2020 - Red Team





	Hit The Fight Out of My Lungs

**Author's Note:**

  * For [flowersforgraves](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flowersforgraves/gifts).



> Heya dear! I sincerely hope this hits some of your likes, it's a little out of my comfort zone but you inspired me to try and I hope I did the idea justice 💚

Time has less meaning in large amount than it does in minute ones when you're immortal. It's not the centuries that count, but the moments within, which you keep with you, which remain in your memory as you travel through countries and continents, and history. 

It's to see Andy with her hands bound over her head, together, and then with ropes that loop around the bedposts in one of those moments where they get to not be into the world, but just into the space they create for each other. They carve it, in the fabric of their lives that are either one long stretch without a hitch or a series of tactical plans and gunshots that echo down the drain of their minds long after they've been fired. 

It's to hear Andy gasp as she pulls on her bindings with all her might, knowing the marks will fade too quickly if she gives it anything but her best. It's to watch her blissfully ignore the safety thread that would let her break free. 

"You're doing great." Booker tells her, every time, never amiss. He waits for the right moment, too. The moment she'll look up into his eyes and the rage at the bottom of hers will be fading just enough to leave them glassy. 

Subduing Andy is only ever doable because she wants it to be, Booker knows too much of her, too well, to think otherwise. Even when she wants it, craves it, she fights it though.

"Want more?" He asks her, breathless himself even though it's his hands wrapped around her neck, squeezing. 

Her airways cut off, her eyes wide with that primal fear they seek together, her mouth open in vain, he can feel her heartbeat, wild, under his palm and fingers and almost up his arms. She inhabits him, owns him even when he's the one sucking the oxygen out of her, pressing the heel of his hands to her throat and their lips together, sealed. 

"Want more?" He repeats, squeezing her midsection with his thighs as he does, more impact, more meaning, more compelling demand that finally makes her knock on the wall behind her.  _ No. _

He releases her neck, grins at her throaty chuckle. It's elated, not delirious just yet but maybe, if he pushes her just a bit more, they can get her there once more. 

The trust she puts in him is whole, always, but these moments of peace in battle are the ones that truly tell Booker the whole extent of it. Doubt isn't really in their nature, even when he's so overcome with the width and length of their lives that it all blurs together, blurs the line between truly living, and simply existing. 

"Beat me," she asks next. He loves how hoarse her voice is, yet still too powerful. It washes over him, slaps him in the face in a way that her being the one tied up to the bed wouldn't suggest. "Beat me hard." 

"Yes ma'am." He nods, and just as he does so, he lifts himself up and off her lap, kneels on the bed and swiftly, roughly, flips her on the bed, relishing the choked sound she makes when her wrists twist before she can accommodate the new position. 

Stripped to her underwear like this, face-planted in the pillows, Booker has ample choice of where to hit her. Her taut back looks enticing, planes of smooth muscle that tense under his tickling touch as he teases her with the possibility. The dip of her lower back, darkened by the dim light not fully reaching it around his body, and the roundness of her ass as she tries to move still. 

That's only until Booker splays his fingers in her hair and pulls, hard. "Enough." 

She doesn't fully settle, but the thrashing reduces to only her legs jittering above the sheets, crinkling and folding them under her. 

"Flogger?" He checks. Her quasi-silent moan is enough of an answer. 

Booker smiles, both happy he can read her as well as he does, as been able to for so long now, and amused that it truly is what she wants. Andy likes floggers when she's in a mood. She likes floggers because the whistling they make as they descend on her warn her, and yet the striking pain of their hits still manage to take her by surprise. She likes them, because under them she can thrash as much as she wants, neither of them caring much for a stray strand wrapping where it shouldn't - perks of healing as fast as they do, edging is less risky for them, it also means they've experienced enough of it that they both know where their limits are, even if said limits tend to shrink more and more. 

Today's not exactly that kind of day though. 

Booker gets up from the bed and walks to his closet, finds his duffel, and after minimal rummaging, finds their weapon of choice. 

"Breathe, don't tense up." He tells her, force of habit, and as always, it gets him a sharp laugh from Andy. She doesn't say anything though. "Here we go." 

"One." She says, barely sounding affected as 40 leather strands map her thighs and backside. 

"Two." Booker smiles at the hitch in her voice. 

He angles the third to catch on one thigh only, and there it is, the first gasp. 

"Four." Andy moans. 

"Five." Her hands grip the ropes keeping them attached. 

"Six." She cries out, the inflaming dart of a few strands catching her lower back. 

"Faster?" He asks, quietly, weighting the long leather-padded handle of the flogger. 

"Yeah." she breathes, turning her head inside her arms to glance at him behind her. "Please." She smirks. 

"Seven here we come." Booker winks, and hits. And hits. And hits. 

"Ten." Andy's breathing is getting erratic, her thighs stricken with red and the sliver of her ass that peek under her boxer shorts well on its way to scarlet.

The sounds of the flogger beating her back now, echo around the room, deafening everything but their respective breathing. Booker's mind is wholly on Andy, and the precision of his motions as he strikes and aims for her hip, then lower down her thigh, then just shy of her neck. Every time he pulls the flogger back to prepare for the next hit, he drags it down her skin, pushing in places, making red flesh white again with pressure. 

By the time Andy's shouting the twentieth hit, her skin is filled with marks of her beating, deep reds and softer pinks and barely any trace of her pale complexion. She's breathing hard, her toes curling and relaxing quickly and Booker's forehead is sheened in sweat, his own back and shoulders burning from the strength he put in the process. 

"Enough?" He asks, and when she nods, weaker than before, her breath whizzing out of her abused throat, he throws the flogger onto the nearest armchair. 

He watches Andy for a while after that, watches her bask in the afterglow of the pain, in the overwhelming warmth he's experienced himself when they turn the tables around. He knows how all-encompassing it is, feeling like your skin is on fire, everywhere, and yet nothing burns unless it's touched directly. He also knows how disappointing it can be if they don't focus on enjoying it before it starts healing, so Booker lets her. 

He moves to the bathroom to gather a towel, a bowl of water and some oil. He takes a look at their shelves of blurays on his way back to the bed, too, a fair idea of what they'll be doing until and maybe even after Nicky and Joe get back. 

"Ready to come down?" He whispers, more gently than any other question he's asked her today. 

He sits on the bed with on leg under him as she lazily gazes up at him and nods with a smile. 

It fills him with a satisfaction like no other. 

A few practiced tugs and pulls get her wrists free of the rope, Booker makes sure to hold them so her arms don't just give out and fall onto the bed. He sets them on either side of her head gently and immediately starts rubbing them for blood flow. He does the same with her shoulder and neck. He pushes Andy's hair out of her face and behind her ear. 

"Washing you up now, then movie, sounds good?" 

Andy hums. 

It's a slow process, one Booker enjoys just as much as that of giving her what she needs when she needs it. First he wipes the sweat off her body with one of his wet towels, hoping the water he's soaked them in is the right temperature and grinning when Andy groans appreciatively. He goes all the way down to her toes, then tosses the towel back into the bathroom and walks back to get the oil. 

He lathers her back in the oil, taking a thinner close to spread it around and rub it in. It turns into a full-blown massage quickly enough, he can never resist indulging himself when they come to that part. 

"Softie." Andy whispers while he kneads at her thighs with care. 

"Toughie." He quips back, smiling to himself as he keeps going until it's time for the last pass of a towel to catch any excess oil and he's done. 

"Can you walk?" He asks, half-expecting Andy to huff and laugh him off. 

She yawns instead. 

"I could." She turns around onto her back, wincing in that way that just feels so right Booker bites his lip. 

"Got it." He nods, and leans down to gather her into his arms. 

Andy's quick to wrap her arms and legs around him and together, they get to the living room of their current apartment, settle on the couch with a blanket that's too big even with both of them under it and Booker quickly puts on their favored post-scening movie -  _ Les Enfants du Paradis _ . 

It's easy to fall into the rhythm of the movie, following Arletty and Jean-Louis Barrault through the streets of Paris and the Théâtre des Funambules. 

It's not long before Nicky and Joe finally make it back to this place they'll call home for a while longer. Probably. Andy is already asleep, but as the two men join them on the couch, pulling on the blanket to get under it too, Booker feels at peace. Letting the voices of his family lull him into a nap of his own as they recite lines from the movie is easy, familiar, safe. 

_ "Paris est tout petit pour ceux qui, comme nous, s'aiment d'un aussi grand amour." _

**Author's Note:**

> The quote is from [Les Enfants du Paradis (Children of Paradise)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_Paradise) and translates to "Paris is too small a city for those of us who, like us, love each other so deeply."


End file.
